Internationale Zeitschrift für psychische Notfallgesundheit und menschliche Resilienz

Abstrakt

Mental illness and the utility of explanatory models

Andy Crawford

Throughout history, there has been fervent debate on the nature of mental disease. The phrase "mental health" was first used in ancient Greece by Plato, who advocated a mentalist concept of mental sickness and defined it as reason that is supported by temper and rules over passion. Hippocrates, who adopted a more physicalist perspective around the same time, characterised many mental illnesses as imbalances between various "humours" around the same period. Griesinger was the first to assert nearly 200 years ago that "mental sickness is brain illness," a claim that has strongly influenced the more contemporary medical understanding of mental illness. The last few decades' significant advancements in genetics and brain imaging have strengthened biological psychiatry more than ever, and contributed to the reification of mental disorders as illnesses of the brain